Professor Durrani expands students' cultural horizons
Julie Osborne
Issue date: 4/28/10 Section: Student Life
"You must challenge yourself," Mrs. Carmen Durrani tells her Spanish 201 class. She is talking from experience when she requests this from her students. She has earned multiple degrees, traveled many different places, and has had many unique experiences. She not only teaches conjugations and verb tenses, she teaches about the cultures of the Spanish-speaking countries and the importance of knowing foreign languages. It is easy to see her passion for languages and she makes it easy for her students to catch some of that passion, too.
Durrani grew up in Sint-Truiden, a city in eastern Belgium. She has spoken two of the three official languages, Dutch and French, all her life, and she started learning German in middle school. She speaks fondly of her small hometown with a population of about 30-35,000 people. She described the beauty of Saint Martin's Cathedral and the now diminishing monasteries on the town square where there were open air markets on Saturday mornings. Farmers sold fruits and vegetables or different kinds of butters, and others sold meats, or clothing, or shoes.
When she visited the city where she grew up after many years of absence she said that it looked very different. Some of the buildings and landmarks she knew well and used to navigate by are now gone to make room for buildings and houses that can accommodate modern technology. She says that even though she does not know many of the people that live there now, it is still a wonderful place to be. It's just "cozy."
She acquired her love of languages by traveling to different places and from the tourists who came to her town from different areas of Europe. A teacher from her middle school helped Durrani mold her dreams of using her skills in foreign languages for the future. Her teacher gave a class assignment to write about their dreams for the European Union. The European Union is a combination of 27 countries who integrate their economic and political decisions. This assignment caused Durrani to desire a future in working for the European Union.
Durrani grew up in Sint-Truiden, a city in eastern Belgium. She has spoken two of the three official languages, Dutch and French, all her life, and she started learning German in middle school. She speaks fondly of her small hometown with a population of about 30-35,000 people. She described the beauty of Saint Martin's Cathedral and the now diminishing monasteries on the town square where there were open air markets on Saturday mornings. Farmers sold fruits and vegetables or different kinds of butters, and others sold meats, or clothing, or shoes.
When she visited the city where she grew up after many years of absence she said that it looked very different. Some of the buildings and landmarks she knew well and used to navigate by are now gone to make room for buildings and houses that can accommodate modern technology. She says that even though she does not know many of the people that live there now, it is still a wonderful place to be. It's just "cozy."
She acquired her love of languages by traveling to different places and from the tourists who came to her town from different areas of Europe. A teacher from her middle school helped Durrani mold her dreams of using her skills in foreign languages for the future. Her teacher gave a class assignment to write about their dreams for the European Union. The European Union is a combination of 27 countries who integrate their economic and political decisions. This assignment caused Durrani to desire a future in working for the European Union.
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